I’ve recently coached a few friends on developing and maintaining a presence on the web for their business, personal or creative endeavors. Each of these people had been intimidated by the prospect of having to hire a designer, programmer, host and such for what they saw as minimal need. I told them they ought to consider the $9 solution.
Here’s the process, with the vendors I would suggest, step-by-step:
1. (a) If you consider your presence as a text-heavy site, go to a blogging-service site and sign-up. If you use Gmail and already have an account, I might suggest using Blogger.com (which is also duplicated at Blogspot; both being owned by Google). Follow the easy-to-use process of choosing a (free) design, a memorable front URL (web address, like “dearjohn” if your name is John and you’re a writer, which would then translate to dearjohn.blogspot.com) and write a post (like a diary entry) or two. Note that you can add photos and links and all sorts of other functionality.
1. (b) If you consider your presence as a photo-heavy site, go to a photo-hosting site and sign-up (Flikr, Ofoto, ImageShack). My favorite (by far) is SmugMug. Follow the easy-to-use process of choosing a (free) design, a memorable front URL (web address, like “shootjohn” if your name is John and you’re a photographer, which would translate to shootjohn.blogspot.com) and write a post (like a diary entry) or two. Note that you can add text and links and all sorts of other functionality.
2. Go to a domain registry and buy the URL you wish. My go-to is GoDaddy.com. This is where the $9 comes in. So John the writer goes and buys “dearjohn.com”. Now, enable what the regisry calls both “forwarding” a domain name and “masking” it. Set the URL “dearjohn.com” to FORWARD to dearjohn.blogspot.com and MASK it. This means that anyone who types in “dearjohn.com” will see the content at dearjohn.blogspot.com while the browser address field will still contain dearjohn.com.
There you have it! A site for $9 that gives you:
- a SEO-compliant (search engine optimized) site that can be found by any search engine (because its ultimately built in HTML and will rely on your content and links to judge relevancy). It can easily be found by Google, Yahoo, etc.
- a CMS (content management system, because you’re using the site-providers blogging software) that allows you, the non-tech person, to manage the content and publish it live at any point in time.
- outside of buying the URL, the site build, design and hosting is FREE.
“Publishers are just middlemen. That’s all. If artists could remember that more often, they’d save themselves a lot of aggravation.” ~ Hugh Macleod
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